


Freddie Goes to Wolf Trap

by RedheadAmongWolves



Series: For Which We Were Born [5]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Mindhunter (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Freddie Lounds & All Her Ghosts, M/M, Post-Hannibal (TV) Season/Series 03, Vignette, sleuthing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-30
Updated: 2021-01-30
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:47:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29087814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedheadAmongWolves/pseuds/RedheadAmongWolves
Summary: She’s on an evidence hunt, not a house tour, or a jaunt down fucked-up memory lane.or: Freddie visits some old ghosts
Series: For Which We Were Born [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735834
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Freddie Goes to Wolf Trap

**Author's Note:**

> title read also as: Frankie Goes to Hollywood
> 
> a little vignette I couldn't resist writing for my MindHannibal AU. I swear I never planned to like Freddie lol

Freddie goes back to Wolf Trap, because what kind of journalist would she be if she didn’t?

It is utterly fucking weird to turn the corner onto Graham’s drive and see no house waiting at the end of it. Obviously she saw the news: the little cottage reduced to a pile of ashes and smoldering foundation, with supposedly three victims lost to the flames. Three victims Freddie had decided a long time ago never to mourn. And she isn’t, shut up: no, Freddie’s biggest regret at the moment is not being there the night it ignited. 

She’d been in Sacramento, of all places, when her assistant editor called her. She’d ditched the story she was following and booked the first flight she possibly could, a red eye with only middle seats left, which meant she was sent hurtling back to the East Coast smushed between a very large man who smelled like cigars-- which Freddie hates more than cigarettes-- and a very tiny old woman— tinier than Freddie— who was reading the latest Stephen King book, which Freddie was afraid she’d drop and crush her brittle little old lady bones to the pleather seat. At least the mental image allowed her to spend the rest of the 3,000 miles imagining a terrible front page feature for  _ “Old Woman Squished by Stephen King in Sky.” _ A little misleading, but it’d make her laugh, which, well. Freddie hasn’t laughed in a while. 

She’s certainly not laughing as she climbs out of her car in front of the grey ruins of the house. She had never been inside, back when it had been occupied, but it looks ridiculously small as just the squat outline of a charred floor on the dark, damp ground. She liked it better when it was surrounded by snow. At least the lack of color made sense then. But the scene before her is just... bleak. 

As quickly as she’d hustled over here, she’s still late; the FBI and the media vans are long gone, and the wreckage shows clear signs of having been picked through as the coroner searched in vain for bodies. The house had burned fast and hot despite the rain, almost like it had wanted to burn. Convenient, she tuts. A crime scene that wanted to erase its own evidence. 

But she read the lead agent’s— that Holden Ford wunderkind, Graham’s successor— statement, retrieved from a trusty source on the inside of Quantico’s ugly beige walls, and that’s the main reason she’s here. Because there’s something that wouldn’t have burned, even in Graham’s own personal circle of hell. 

She’s in her oldest sneakers, the ones she’d bought when an old boyfriend tried to talk her into going running with him. She hated running, but she’d worn the shoes to chase him off and hadn’t had the energy left to get rid of them. She’s glad she didn’t, now, as she gingerly makes her way through the ashes of the front porch. It almost makes her smile as she crosses the threshold without having to knock. Freddie has always loved a good B&E.

Keeping her eyes glued to the shambles of the floor, she steps further inside. A whole house, reduced to rubble and dusty flakes. That’s a big thing to lose. Freddie’s never had a house of her own: when  _ TattleCrime _ had first been starting out, Freddie had been couch-surfing through her brother’s friends’ dorms. College kids were a good starting audience for a true crime tabloid; they’re sleep-deprived and bloodthirsty. Even after it picked up to actual print rather than pamphlets, Freddie hadn’t made the leap to an apartment, choosing instead to hotel-hop, because room service (rarely) and convenience store meals (more often) seemed easier than learning how to cook. Plus she’s always said she goes where the story takes her. She technically has a flat in Virginia now, against her wishes but to the delight of her agent rep since now she’s able to put an address by her name, but it’s barely furnished. 

At least Wolf Trap hadn’t been anyone’s home for the better part of three decades, when it went up in smoke. No wonder this place was so quick to burn: the dust bunnies must have been crazy flammable. 

_ Focus, _ she snips at herself. She’s on an evidence hunt, not a house tour, or a jaunt down fucked-up memory lane. 

A knife, Ford had told the first responding officer. He had brought a knife to defend himself, grabbed from his kitchen when his gun had been out of reach. Both would have been useless against a power-tripping Will Graham, but she appreciates the effort. It’s poetic in its pathetic hopefulness. And that’s coming from someone who brought a gun to a crowbar fight and lost.

Freddie hadn’t been particularly attentive in science class, but she knows the steel knife wouldn’t have melted. She’s just hoping— yeah, yeah, hope is an annoying little bastard, even she falls prey occasionally— that the FBI had been so delighted by the tidy close of their three most dreaded loose ends that they hadn’t bothered to fish out the knife that hadn’t been used. Because, Ford’s statement had read, the psychos killed each other in a good old-fashioned cowboy standoff. 

She should pay this Ford guy a visit. See how similar he is to Graham, or different. If he’s different, he doesn’t have a chance at surviving that job. If he’s the same, well. He doesn’t have a chance at surviving that job. Honestly, why the fuck do people still want to work for the FBI? PI work is where it’s at.

Her foot goes clean through a seemingly solid plank of wood, and she yelps, then swears. Her pant leg is still intact, so she doesn’t think she’s scraped anything, but she mentally shakes her fist at God and the FBI. She gets the message, thanks. PI work doesn’t have health benefits if your crime scene gives you tetanus. 

She picks through the ruins a while longer, and just as she’s about to call it quits, she catches a glint of silver under a pile of cinders. 

“Jackpot,” she whispers, then grimaces when the sound doesn’t carry very far. She’d been doing a great job of ignoring Wolf Trap’s creepy deafening silence, but she’s suddenly aware of it in full force. She grabs for the knife, since she’s already wearing her gloves, so she can get out of there as fast as she fucking can. 

It’s a standard butcher’s knife; she’s pretty sure she has the same one in her own kitchen, which she hasn’t set foot in for three months. Only something catches her eye, as she lifts the utensil closer. 

The bright red of her own reflection on the shiny surface, yes, but also: the red of a droplet of blood, minuscule but very much there, at the roundest section of the razor-sharp curve of the blade. But the statement hadn’t mentioned the knife being used in any way, rendered useless as it was by Graham and Lecter’s weapons. Yet here’s the evidence that it had been held to someone’s skin, maybe even a throat. But whose throat? And who held it?

Suddenly there’s the familiar, flame-hot prickling at her neck that means she’s being watched, but Freddie whirls around to the broad expanse of the field and the barn and finds... no one.

“Fucking hell, Graham, you really picked the creepiest place to live, didn’t you,” she mutters, then remembers with a sharp chill that she’s talking to a ghost while standing on what essentially counts for three graves, and she practically leaps out of the wreckage. 

Wait. The barn. 

She spins to face it again, but there’s no one standing in the open doorway. Even though it feels like there  _ should _ be.

The  _ open _ doorway.

This property hasn’t been visited in thirty years. Why is the barn open? 

She all but runs across the field, careful to point the knife tip-down, because she’d rather not lose an eye tonight. She’d also rather not go back in that barn, with those icky memories of the contents of Graham’s ice box, but she has to. Her gut is practically rioting in her abdomen, and if there’s anything a journalist has to do at all costs, it’s trust her fucking gut. 

The barn had been far enough away that it hadn’t caught any of the house’s flames, though its exterior is coated in a fine layer of ash. There aren’t any handprints on the paneling, nor footprints in the drying mud. But  _ something _ called her here. What was it? 

She kicks the door frame in frustration, swearing again when all she does is stub her toe. She‘ll never believe in getting too old for sleuthing, but damn, she’s easy to bruise these days. Her fraying laces untie with the movement, because of course it does, and she hisses through her teeth as she kneels to retie it. And that’s when she sees it. 

Beside the toe of her ratty sneaker is... a drop of blood.

“No  _ fucking _ way.” 

If the three musketeers had died in the house, and Ford never mentioned taking refuge in the barn… why in the seven layers of hell salad is there blood in the barn? 

“And so, Doctor Watson, the plot thickens very much upon us,” Freddie murmurs. She stands up and turns back to the house. In a minute she’ll sweep the rest of the barn, and take enough photos to make her Kodak developer break down in tears, and then head back to Virginia and the hotel room she’s rented right down the street from her dumb empty apartment and start planning what is sure to be the story of the fucking century, but right now, she lets herself still for a moment. She’s not laying any flowers on any grave, mind you, because the blood at her toes indicates someone’s not telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but she-- she’s still allowed to pay respects. To the dead, to the old her, to her demons, to whatever. 

“If you aren’t dead, I hope you have the good sense to stay away. If you are dead, well. Rest in fucking peace, assholes,” she whispers to the wind, and turns back to her shoe. “Now let’s go meet the new kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> "the plot thickens very much upon us" is apparently from a 1671 play that i have never read nor heard of yet i inexplicably knew this phrase so who knows maybe i wrote it in a past life 
> 
> don't own/profit from mindhunter/hannibal etc etc disclaimers~


End file.
